14 March 2015

That Ed Leedskalnin (1887–1951) was a highly unusual character is without question, as is the fact that he had – or at least that he developed – a very sophisticated and original brain. Ed was born in Latvia, where he at the age of twenty-six was due to marry the sixteen-year-old Agnes Scuffs, who jilted him on the day before the wedding was due to take place because she considered him too old.Agnes's decision left Ed so devastated that he left Latvia and started working in Canada and California, working in highly physically demanding jobs such as the lumber industry, although he was only five foot tall and weighed just one hundred pounds. Toward 1920 he moved to the south of Florida, originally buying very cheaply a small area of land in Florida City about ten miles south of the present Coral Castle, which was initially called 'Rock Gate Park'.In Florida City Ed began making carvings out of the coral stone, supposedly dedicating his work to his lost Agnes, whom he named 'Sweet Sixteen'. He later received help from a man with a tractor in moving his carvings to their present location, although no one is known to have seen him working on the actual carvings, which he is said to have carried out in secrecy at night, often involving moving huge and very weighty blocks around. On his own. When asked how he could have achieved this, he simply said he had an understanding of 'the laws of weight and leverage'. When asked why he did it he seems to have gone silent. This I can understand: exactly what can a football lover, or a television addict, or a stamp collector, etc, give in reply to the same unanswerable question? But at least Ed Leenskalnin's work, even if essentially gloriously useless, is a wonderful testament to self-education and of course sheer eccentricity.Ed also wrote several publications, the longest being A Book in Every Home: Containing Three Subjects: Ed's Sweet Sixteen, Domestic and Political Views (1936), plus several pamphlets on magnetism. Billy Idol's song 'Sweet Sixteen' was inspired by Ed's preoccupation.Ed died in his sleep from a stroke at the Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, at the age of sixty-four, after leaving a note on his door saying that he'd gone to hospital. He never married.

And this is the Three-Ton Gate entrance to Coral Castle, the actual gate to which will be revealed very shortly after a brief digression.

Basking in the Floridian heat and barely visible in the previous photo at the top of the stone and immediately above the right of the window hole is an African rainbow lizard or amaga, which is not a native to the region but probably an escapee from a lizard-dealing neighbour. The species has now established itself in the immediate area. A splendid creature this is, and no doubt very used to humans.

'NOTICE

BE CAREFUL

ANYTHING YOU

DO ON THESE

PREMISES IS AT

YOUR OWN RISK'

Just Ed trying to cover himself.

The Three-Ton Gate seen from the inside. The triangle weighs about six thousand pounds, and is easily revolved by hand. It is still lubricated through a hole in the center.

Nine-Ton Gate, on the other hand, has no such lubricating system, and although until a number of years ago – see the Jarvis Cocker Youtube clip – it could be moved with one finger, for the preservation of both any user's health and the preservation of the structure itself, this is now out of use.

The Polaris Telescope was built in 1940.

The crossed wires of the structure can be seen through a hole in the wall opposite, and apparently Ed built his sundial (see below) by means of his observations from the telescope. As the science is beyond me, I won't even attempt to explain.

Ed's sundial, on top of which stands the piece of furniture of which he was very proud – the first coral rocking chair he ever built.

And the sundial itself, from which it can be seen that the time was about 12:30.

The Moon Fountain, with the crescent shapes (weighing eighteen tons each) representing the first and final quarters of the moon. The circular shape in front represents the full moon, and is lined with concrete to prevent the water seeping out of the porous coral stone.

The planets, perhaps the most photographed of Coral Castle's structures.

Ed – who had no electricity – positioned his reading chairs to gain full advantage of the sun. These structures look pretty uncomfortable, although I can say from experience of sitting in the one in the foreground here that it is amazingly relaxing to sit in.

The chairs around here were rocking chairs, until concern for safety decreed that they should be grounded: the previous danger to toes is perhaps best left unthought of. They are grouped around a representation of a rock map of Florida.

A clearer view of Florida, Panhandle and all.

That 'all' including Lake Okeechobee!

The Feast of Love Table, shaped like a heart. Coral Castle usually has a wedding on Valentine's Day, and although no lover of either weddings or Valentine's Day I fully support any revenue coming into Coral Castle, a feast not only of eccentricity, but also brilliance.

Ed's obelisk. Yeah, it's so easy (but so cheap) to see the phallic in this, so let's drop it. The top is in the shape of the star of Latvia, and the obelisk is sunk six feet into the earth.

'MADE 1928

MOVED 1939 [?]

BORN 1887

LATVIA'

Ed had no running water, therefore the need for a well, in which he also stored food.

Ed's bath, which is tiny to go with its occupant.

Some refer to this as his barbecue.

Ed's tool room beneath his living quarters.

'THE MOST FREQUENT QUESTION OVERHEARD HERE IS "HOW DID ONE MAN WITHOUT

ASSISTANCE CONSTRUCT THE CORAL CASTLE?" THE ANSWER IS: WITH AN UNCANNY

KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAWS OF LEVERAGE AND BALANCE, ENGINEERING AND SCULPTURE

THE TOOLS DISPLAYED HERE – MANY MADE FROM OLD AUTO PARTS – WERE USED BY

EDWARD LEEDSKALNIN IN BUILDING THE CORAL CASTLE.

WHILE TODAY THE CORAL CASTLE IS A PRECIOUS WORK OF ART IT IS BELIEVED

THAT LEEDSKALNIN'S COST WAS MINIMAL SINCE HE EXCAVATED THE CORAL ROCK

FROM THE PREMISES AND RECYCLED OLD AUTO PARTS.

HE LIVED ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF THIS BUILDING IN A VERY SPARTAN FASHION,

HAD NO ELECTRICITY OR RUNNING WATER. HE SPENT TIME IN LATER YEARS IN THE

STUDY OF MAGNETISM, ATROMOMY AND RADIO, AND WAS SEEN OFTEN IN THE

HOMESTEAD PUBLIC LIBRARY. HE DIED IN DEC. 1951 AT THE AGE OF 1964.

THE CORAL CASTLE IS PRIVATELY OWNED AND HAS BEEN OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

SINCE 1953.'

Sixteen steps lead up to Ed's sleeping quarters.

The bed is extremely primitive.

A child's wooden rocking chair.

The tube is where Ed kept his money, and on his death was found to contain $3600. Some of his money would have come from the sale of land.

His toilet arrangements were very basic indeed.We were surprised and delighted to see that Coral Castle at the time of our visit was attracting so many visitors. This is surely one of Florida's most essential places to see, much more interesting than the usual places people flock to.

Britaine

Slump, by Will Self

Gallia – Ménie Muriel Dowie

Gallia (1895) is a rather obscure novel which emphatically belongs to the New Woman sub-genre, and concerns a young intellectual woman who refuses to comply with the prevailing gender constructs: this is a Victorian woman with spunk.

Westering Women

Chancy develops the theory of culture-lacune, a revolutionary strategy by means of which Haitian women writers both celebrate and fight the absence and the loss which has been the female voice in the history of the country. In Haitian women writers, a folkloric figure is used as a tool: they 'reformulate the marabout eternalized in Oswald Durand's still popular folksong "Choucoune" of 1883.' Whereas Durand's Choucoune is a figure of betrayal who stands for a lost Haiti, the women writers transform her and reclaim her for themselves. Some writers included in this study are Anne–christine d'Adesky, Ghislaine Charlier, Marie Chauvet, Jan J. Dominique, Nadine Magloire, Edwidge Danticat, and the earlier writers Virgile Valcin, and Annie Desroy.

The Clansman – Thomas Dixon

The Marrow of Tradition – Charles W. Chesnutt

At the end of The Marrow of Tradition (1901), the black Dr Miller enters the house of the white Carteret family in an attempt to save the life of their young child. Previously, Major Carteret had not allowed Miller to tend to his son because Miller is black, and Miller's own young son has just died in a skirmish instigated by the Major himself. Clearly, Chesnutt's focus of interest is not on the fate of the white family's son, but on the integrity of Dr Miller. The novel is set 'Wellington', although there are parallels between this fictional town and Wilmington, North Carolina, which was the scene of a 'race riot' in 1898. Dr Miller represents the 'New Negro', the educated, ambitious and socially aware black person beginning to emerge through many years of slavery in the Southern states, through the subservience of Uncle Tomism, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and now through the appalling compromise of the Jim Crow laws in the South.* Most of all, though, all black people have to battle against a wall of prejudice that still exists, where whites not only segregate and bar, but are only too eager, particularly via lynching, to apply the rule of the mob. The book is a kind of thriller and obviously is influenced by many Victorian novels that have gone before it (and there is an unfortunate strong touch of melodrama towards the end), but it is evident that the novel's main purpose is didactic. *Along with T. S. Stribling's Birthright and Chesnutt's own Mandy Oxendine, there is a scene in which the segregation of blacks from whites on a train takes place.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt

I approached this book, which Edmund White calls a 'non-fiction novel', with some caution because of its great popularity: I'm generally very suspicious of books that are popular. However, I was very pleasantly surprised, and also surprised that it has in fact proved so popular, as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is hardly a conventional novel. It's a love affair John Berendt had with Savannah, Georgia, and which brought a stream of tourists into the city in search of the human and architectural sights mentioned, such as Bonaventure Cemetery (where the poet Conrad Aiken's bench grave stands), or perhaps a sighting of Savannah's larger-than-life characters, like 'female impersonator' The Lady Chablis, or hope for an invitaton to a party such as the ones thrown by Joe Odom, the highly likeable con merchant. These characters move around the main story, which is the murder of the priapic Danny Hansford by his employer and occasional lover, the antique furniture dealer Jim Williams, who lived in the impressive Mercer House, the former home of songwriter Johnny Mercer. The novel is funny and fast-moving, but there is a structural problem: it is too episodic, and although the murder and subsequent trials are the central issue, the colourful characters who flit in and out of it somehow don't merge too well with this central interest.

Life in the Iron-Mills - Rebecca Harding Davis

First published in 1861 and based on the experiences of Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) in Wheeling, Virginia, which is today in West Virginia, Life in the Iron-Mills is now seen as a seminal work of American realism. This short story, originally published in Atlantic Monthly, was her masterpiece, and was rediscovered by Tillie Olsen, who wrote an Afterword to the Feminist Press edition in 1972.

Birthright - T. S. Stribling

See post for comment (using the 'SEARCH BLOG' facility to the top left of the page).

Feather Crowns - Bobbie Ann Mason

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - Fannie Flagg

In Country - Bobbie Ann Mason

Mandy Oxendine - Charles W. Chesnutt

This novel was originally written towards the close of the 19th century, and was in fact the first novel Chesnutt wrote. However, The House behind the Cedars (1900) was his first published novel, and it would be 100 years after Mandy Oxendine was written that it was in fact published. This is the story of two mixed race lovers - both of whom could pass for white - Mandy and Tom Lowrey, who part for two years while Tom goes off to educate himself. When he comes back, it is to work in a school for black children, while Mandy is in a white school passing herself as white. Tom's problem is that Mandy now believes that she is in love with the rich womanizer Robert Utley, although the novel develops into a thriller - almost a whodunnit - when Utley is killed when attempting to sexually assault Mandy. A tale of race, class and gender conflict, Mandy Oxendine was considered too daring for publication at the time it was written.

Anitfanaticism: A Tale of the South, by Martha Haines Butt

An anti-Tom novel, and the only novel by this author.

Dorothy Allison – Bastard out of Carolina

Gods in Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson

Starting at Zero: Black Mountain College 1933-57

Fremsley (1987) – Ivor Cutler

A collection of poems, musings and observations from the eccentric Glaswegian Ivor Cutler, a man who was admired by people of all ages. When The New Musical Express once asked him how he would spend Christmas, he said in bed, with the bedclothes pulled around him until it went away. The most notable in the collection: 'A Strategy Suit with a Jelly Pocket'.

The Autobiography of Samuel Bamford: Volume Two: Passages in the Life of a Radical

Roger Vailland: the Man and His Masks – J. E. Flower

Mrs Caldwell Speaks to Her Son (1953; trans. 1968) – Camilo José Cela

Originally published as Mrs. Caldwell habla a su hijo.

Her (1960) – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti is best known as the co-founder of the City Lights bookstore and publisher on Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA, which published Allen Ginsberg's first book of poems, Howl, in 1956. Ferlinguettti's most well known work is A Coney Island of the Mind (1960). The bookstore is recommended, as is the pub Vesuvio's next door to it (with Jack Kerouac Alley between), which is a kind of shrine to the Beat Generation.

As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (1937) – Oliver St John Gogarty

Oliver St John Gogarty is perhaps best remembered for his relationship with James Joyce. A former drinking partner of Joyce's in the early years, Gogarty later became the butt of Joyces insults. In Joyce's early poem 'The Holy Office', Gogarty is represented as a snob, and more famously, there is another representation at the beginning of Ulysses (‘stately plump Buck Mulligan’) in the Martello tower: Joyce had stayed with Gogarty in the Martello tower at Sandy Cove.

The Days Before – Katherine Anne Porter

Critical essays from the Texan noted for her short stories Flowering Judas (1930) and Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), and for her novel Ship of Fools (1962)

The American 1930s: A Literary History – Peter Conn

Interesting for its inclusion of a number of obscure writers.

A Feast of Snakes (1976) – Harry Crews

Harry Crews is one of the wild men of literature. Of working-class origin, Crews writes about the underbelly of America, of drugs, alcohol abuse, and trailer park communities in the Deep South, for instance. He was born in southern Georgia but has spent most of his life in Florida. The problem is perhaps that he also spent too long parodying himself, and it can make us forget his undoubted importance as a serious writer. This is a link to a youtube interview, in which he boasts of spending 30 years of his life drunk every day, and illustrates this problem very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpeFmXJG4Ak.

Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859–1936 Anne Goodwyn Jones

How Late It Was, How Late (1994) - James Kelman

James Kelman - H. Gustav Klaus

James Kelman - Simon Kövesi

The most comprehensive critical work on Kelman so far, although it was published too late to include his latest novel, Kieron Smith, Boy.

Translated Accounts - James Kelman

A Disaffection - James Kelman

The Ticket That Exploded - William Burroughs

Festus: A Poem - Philip J. Bailey

A plaque on a building on the north corner of Fletcher Gate and Middle Pavement, Nottingham, UK, reveals that the writer Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) once lived there. Bailey was born in Nottingham and educated in Glasgow, and is usually associated with the Spasmodic school of poetry along with J. W. Marston, S. T. Dobell, and Alexander Smith. He is most noted for Festus, a huge work to which Bailey was continually adding, and which was heavily influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost. Its most famous lines are: 'We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths; / In feeling, not in figures on a dial / We should count time by theart throbs; he most lives / Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.' There is a bronze bust of Bailey by Albert Toft at the rear entrance to Nottingham Castle.

The Life and Times of Thomas Spence P. M. Ashraf

The Kretzmer Syndrome - Peter Way

The Withered Root (1929) - Rhys Davies

My Wales - Rhys Davies

Soldier Songs - Patrick Macgill

Skerrett - Liam O'Flaherty

A Pig in a Poke - Rhys Davies

The Home-Maker - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Half an Eye: Sea Stories - James Hanley

The Contradictions - Zulfikar Ghose

The Death of Christopher - John Sommerfield

Boy James Hanley

Rhys Davies: A Critical Sketch - R. L. Mégroz

Ellen Glasgow - Barren Ground

The Back-to-Backs (1930) - J. C. Grant

A real obscurity. When it was published, this book – which depicts life in a mining community – was roundly attacked for what was considered to be a brutal attack on the life of miners. Very little is known of Grant, who also wrote poems, although his birth certificate reveals that he was born in Alnwick, Northumbria, to a father who was an author, newspaper editor, and manager.

Trouble dans les Andains - Boris Vian

Spacetime Inn - Lionel Britton

Senselessness - Horacio Castellanos Moya

Le Rivage des Syrtes - Julien Gracq

Rhinocéros - Eugène Ionesco

The Poor Mouth - Flann O'Brien

Out Such Between Through Christine Brooke-Rose

A Frolic of His Own - William Gaddis

Caligrammes - Guillaume Apollinaire

Belle du Seigneur - Albert Cohen

Plays, Poems and Theatre Writings - Joe Corrie

Trouble in Porter Street - John Sommerfield

Men Adrift - Anthony Bertram

Truly Obscure. A novel about philosopher and a writer who meet on a boat. They talk.